Ever since ancient times philosophers and scientists have been contemplating the question whether or not our minds can influence matter. Modern science has finally provided us with an answer. Excitingly enough, it is yes!

Over the course of 28 years Princeton University has tested whether human consciousness, or focused attention can cause physical change. In millions of trials the researchers of the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research (PEAR) laboratory made operators try affect machines that did random things.

There was, for example, the “Random Mechanical Cascade” (RMC), in which 9000 tiny polystyrene balls trickled downward through five nylon pegs, whereby they were scattered into 19 collection bins. Since even chaos has a pattern, one can calculate the outcome of such ‘randomness’. In this experiment, however, the operators were made to sit near the RMC (without touching) and asked to try influence in which bin the spheres would land. And look what happened:

”The observed effects were usually quite small […] but they compounded to highly significant statistical deviations from chance expectations.”

So, the operators could change where these tiny balls landed, just by thinking of it. The researchers found that some people were better at it than others. ”The most effective operators tend to speak of the devices in frankly anthropomorphic terms, and to associate successful performance with the establishment of some form of bond or resonance with the device, akin to that one might feel for one’s car, tools, musical instruments, or sports equipment.”

Don’t you think this is huge? In a way the operators animated the machine with their thoughts, bonded with it, and then the machine responded. I’m blown away by this discovery.

They conducted 396,000 trials whereby the operators were far away from the machines, sometimes thousands of miles. And guess what? The results were the same. Not only did it make no difference how far removed they were from the machine they tried to influence, they were even able to affect the performance of the machine if they thought about it while the machine was not yet switched on.

The laboratory discovered that ”pairs of operators with shared intentions were found to induce further anomalies in the experimental outputs, especially when the two individuals shared an emotional bond.”

The machines were put in places where groups of people congregated to see what happened. Groups with a focus turned out to have even more effect. ”[…] particularly conducive to such field anomalies [are] small, intimate groups, group rituals, sacred sites, musical and theatrical performances, and other charismatic events. In contrast, data generated during most academic conferences, business meetings, or other mundane venues showed less deviation than would be expected by chance.” Apparently, when people together are inspired, or on the same wavelength, their joint minds create what the researchers call a “consciousness field”. This in itself is strong enough to deviate the outcome of the random devices, whether or not the people are aware of the machine.

Not surprisingly, conventional science has trouble accepting the PEAR results, even though they were collected in the most scientific way possible, by serious scientists. Then again, there was a time that scientists believed the world was flat. Luckily nobody gets killed anymore for shaking up the scientific establishment.

In 2007 PEAR was shut down, and the quest to understand the implications of what they found was handed over to the International Consciousness Research Laboratories. I am very excited by all the things they might discover.

Let me recap: our thoughts generate enough power to affect the performance of sensitive, inanimate devices. When emotions are involved, the effect becomes stronger. When we’re in groups with some kind of spiritual focus, the effect again is reinforced. And this is only with dead things. Machines. Can you imagine the effect focused attention paired with emotion can have on our body? Our health?

Alternative medicine is already using these findings. Remote healing is one example I know works, and also I have experienced how both Reiki and Quantum Touch were enhanced when several practitioners focused their healing energy.

Just as food for thought I’m sharing a little demonstration I gave on of the power of our emotions, or rather, the power of joint minds. Just click below: